That's Apple being Apple. McQuivey told me transparency is so important with both internal or external teams. There will already be suspicion and resentment, so come clean right away. There's less resentment with an internal team because, by design, people from different departments will be part of the team. It's kept more in the family even if it's a dysfunctional family. External teams are trickier.

Wal-mart has had success buying small companies to be used as separate innovation teams. McQuivey also mentioned a healthcare company, Intermountain Healthcare, that used a standalone company housed in a separate building tasked with working with vendors and testing and recommending medical devices and services. In this case an outside team worked: Doctors and nurses began to collaborate with lab employees on their tech needs and communication with vendors improved. So did patient care results.

It doesn't always go so smoothly. The decision to to go internal or look outside depends on the company's culture, structure and budget.

Shane, did he have examples of successful efforts to use external disruption teams? The Apple iphone innovation model used secret internal teams, where people had "need to know" separation. Quite different.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.